Principal's warning kills Senior Assassin game at Bridgewater-Raynham

Thursday

May 11, 2017 at 4:20 PMMay 12, 2017 at 2:48 PM

Bridgewater-Raynham Regional High School Principal Angela Watson said she's received multiple calls from Bridgewater and Raynham police about students playing “Senior Assassin,” which involves students attempting to knock each other out of a competitive game with squirt guns, and those efforts to put an end to it went no where.

Tom Relihan The Enterprise TMRelihan_ENT

BRIDGEWATER – The calls come in as reports of suspicious activity – a car full of teenagers camped out in front of someone’s house, or someone hiding in the bushes. At their most extreme, it could be a report of an armed robbery or gunman.

In most cases, though, there’s no real threat – just some end-of-the-year fun for members of the senior class at Bridgewater-Raynham Regional High School playing the popular “Senior Assassin” game. The game involves hunting down and shooting their classmates with water guns to eliminate them from play.

The last student standing wins a pot of money contributed by all the participants.

But for town safety officials, concerned residents and B-R administrators, the students’ squirt-gun skirmishes have raised concerns, so much so that the game prompted B-R Principal Angela Watson to issue an automated call to all parents in the district warning of the risks posed by the game. She also asked that it be brought to a close.

“This game is a non-school sanctioned, non-school sponsored game that seniors play in the spring,” Watson said in the call. “Unfortunately, this game puts students in potentially life-threatening situations.”

Watson said she’s received multiple calls from Bridgewater and Raynham police about students playing the game, and efforts to put an end to it had gone nowhere until the call was made.

“We have spoken to the students, made announcements about the dangers of this game, and I have put information out on Twitter about it,” Watson said. “The game, however, is still being played. Community members do not realize this is a game.”

Calls to the police related to the game have come in as reports of everything from car-jackings to break-ins, and people being held at gunpoint, Watson said.

Because of that, she said students playing Senior Assassin could find themselves in risky situations.

“Obviously, this is causing not only unnecessary work for our police officers, but it is placing our students in harmful situations where a police officer may pull a weapon on a student, thinking the student is armed with a real firearm,” Watson said.

Bridgewater Police Chief Christopher Delmonte said most of the calls his department has received have been related to people being where they shouldn’t be or someone carrying a weapon.

“I think the element of surprise, which is obviously a part of this game, has been the cause of most of the concern,” he said. “It’s kids having fun, and that’s understandable, but we hope they’d try to avoid (those problems.)”

“Senior Assassin” has already caused a few problems in towns across the state.

Just recently, police in Hopkinton drew their guns on a student playing the game after he ran into someone else’s garage and hid in their truck.

The call came in as a report of an armed man, and the student eventually stole and fled in the truck before being stopped by police at gunpoint.

Officers retrieved a large water gun from the vehicle.

In Sharon, where the game has been banned in the past, police issued a formal warning about the game earlier this year on Facebook, hoping to head off any problems.

And the game has proved controversial in the past. The New York Times reported in 1999 that some school districts and student bodies across the country began canceling the game out of respect for the victims of a series horrific school shootings including those in Little Rock, Ark., and Littleton, Colo.

On social media, reaction to the game was mixed. Some town residents recalled playing similar games when they were in high school, while others cautioned that today’s culture is different than it was in the past and said they feel the activity is dangerous.

By Thursday afternoon, there were no water pistols to be seen in the B-R high school parking lot. Senior Dan McGee, who competed in the game, said the student organizers called it off earlier this week, with just three seniors left standing.

“After Ms. Watson put out the call, we said maybe we should just end it,” he said.

The prize money was split between the trio.

McGee said the students tried their best to keep the game within reason, opting to put their own rules in place to keep it safe: no shooting in school or at a student’s workplace, cars were not to be involved in any attacks and students were told not to do anything overly suspicious when setting up their ambushes.

McGee said he feels the district’s response was a bit of an overreaction.

“When little kids play with squirt guns, it’s cute,” he said. “But when we do it, they overreact. It kind of ruins the fun.”